hedness.

The noiseless 'Sankey' let her in. She would have slipped up to her own
room, but old Jolyon, who had heard her entrance, was in the dining-room
doorway.

"Come in and have your milk," he said. "It's been kept hot for you.
You're very late. Where have you been?"

June stood at the fireplace, with a foot on the fender and an arm on the
mantelpiece, as her grandfather had done when he came in that night of
the opera. She was too near a breakdown to care what she told him.

"We dined at Soames's."

"H'm! the man of property! His wife there and Bosinney?"

"Yes."

Old Jolyon's glance was fixed on her with the penetrating gaze from which
it was difficult to hide; but she was not looking at him, and when she
turned her face, he dropped his scrutiny at once. He had seen enough,
and too much. He bent down to lift the cup of milk for her from the
hearth, and, turning away, grumbled: "You oughtn't to stay out so late;
it makes you fit for nothing."

He was invisible now behind his paper, which he turned with a vicious
crackle; but when June came up to kiss him, he said: "Good-night, my
darling," in a tone so tremulous and unexpected, that it was all the girl
could do to get out of the room without breaking into the fit of sobbing
which lasted her well on into the night.

When the door was closed, old Jolyon dropped his paper, and stared long
and anxiously in front of him.

'The beggar!' he thought. 'I always knew she'd have trouble with him!'

Uneasy doubts and suspicions, the more poignant that he felt himself
powerless to check or control the march of events, came crowding upon
him.

Was the fellow going to jilt her? He longed to go and say to him: "Look
here, you sir! Are you going to jilt my grand-daughter?" But how could
he? Knowing little or nothing, he was yet certain, with his unerring
astuteness, that there was something going on. He suspected Bosinney of
being too much at Montpellier Square.

'This fellow,' he thought, 'may not be a scamp; his face is not a bad
one, but he's a queer fish. I don't know what to make of him. I shall
never know what to make of him! They tell me he works like a nigger, but
I see no good coming of it. He's unpractical, he has no method. When he
comes here, he sits as glum as a monkey. If I ask him what wine he'll
have, he says: "Thanks, any wine." If I offer him a cigar, he smokes it
as if it were a twopenny German thing. I never see him looking a